Illumination devices or light fixtures creating different light effects are used in different fields of application, inter alia in the entertainment industry or as part of an architectural installation.
Illumination devices can generate a light beam having a certain beam width and a certain divergence and can inter alia generate a light beam with a uniform light distribution. Furthermore, the illumination devices may be adapted to project an image onto a target surface. Recently, LEDs (light emitting diodes) have replaced the former light sources in the illumination devices. Multiple LEDs emitting different colours often replace a single light source. This, however, changes the visible appearance of the illumination device, as the multiple LED light sources are exposed to the viewer and the light emits from a larger area. If single colour LEDs are used in a colour mixing version to generate a colour, then all the LED colours might be visible. However, the appearance of multiple light dots may be not satisfying.
WO 2011/131197 discloses an illumination device with a first group of light sources which illuminate different optical lenses to which for each optical lens a light beam is generated. Furthermore, a second group of light sources is provided generating a background light for the parts of the illumination device between the optical lenses. A need exists to further increase the flexibility when generating light beams in an illumination device.